Thursday, April 11, 2013

The Campaigns Update v2


Update has been released! It contains fixes and improvements all over the place. Especially the campaigns, be sure to check them out. Actually, check everything out and report all problems you find!

Go to the features tab and read all the update notes from version x.x. Those are changes made through the patcher.

Everything is ready for version 5.5 but I will postpone until I'm sure there are no major bugs. So please, report all problems and help me out a bit (more)!

I've noticed a little bug recently, regarding the UI and gathered resources not being displayed correctly.
The way to fix this is to go to "Options" and press the "Restore Defaults" button. This will fix the UI and afterwards you can change any setting any way you want, make them like they were before loading the default settings, but you need to press the "Restore Defaults" button at least once.



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Alright, so, as some of you know, some time ago I began to work on the game's campaigns, improving scenarios and cutscenes, fixing bugs my mod created and making them more enjoyable. I focused mainly on the vanilla campaign "Blood, Ice and Steel"(1) and TWC campaign "Fire and Shadow"(2).

The vanilla campaign went smoothly, no major problems, a real joy to work on. But then I got to TWC campaign... It is a real damn mess. Just play it and you'll see, one minute you're Iroquois, the other you're a cheap, poorly made American nation, the other you're Sioux, and at all times you're a combination of all 3...
This had to be fixed to make a proper campaign which offers what it promises, the American Revolution and the American-Indian war.

Both acts from the "Fire and Shadow" campaign have about 3 scenarios in which the player controls a Native civ, and in the rest of the scenarios the player controls an American civ. I basically used the American civ I already made for my mod and gave it to Act3 (Steel) from vanilla and to the "Fire and Shadow" campaign. The "Fire" act version of the civ is made to feel a bit older, a bit more British, to fit the timeline.

The real problem here were the Home Cities. Like the civs, the "Fire and Shadow" HC is a mess, so I transformed it into an early American HC with some British flavor in it. It has less Native cards but I think its better this way.
Another problem here is a feature which TWC added for campaigns, a Home City button present in the campaign menu which allows you to visit the scenarios HC at any time. This button is present in TWC and TAD campaigns but not in the vanilla campaign. I tried everything I could to make it appear in the vanilla campaign, no luck, it seems to be "hardcoded"(3). I can however transfer the button from one campaign to another, but it can't be used by both.

So, I did the following thing: Both vanilla Act2 and TWC Act1 use the same HC, Philadelphia. Meaning that, when you edit the cards in one campaign, it transfers to the other one as well. Which means that I can transfer the HC button from TWC campaign to vanilla. Why? Because vanilla is the first and a player is suppose to play it before TWC campaign to understand everything well, plus the vanilla campaign is bigger so it makes sense.

Actually, I know most of this doesn't really make sense and please hold your suggestions/criticism until you see it.(4)
When do I release this update? Well, I promised it will be soon, but it looks like it will take longer. I also plan to release updated hotkeys for all the new buildings and units I added so stay tuned, I will announce the release in this post.
Thank you.


1 - "Blood, Ice and Steel" means: Blood - Act1 - Morgan Black; Ice - Act2 - John Black; Steel - Act3 - Amelia Black
2 - "Fire and Shadow" means: Fire - Act1 - Nathaniel Black; Shadow - Act2 - Chayton Black
3 - "hardcoded" means something beyond current modding capabilities and/or beyond my capabilities
4 - Yes, I used the word "campaign" a lot in this post. Please excuse my poor English and also please excuse my exaggerated use of commas and dots...

18 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Thanks for the update!
    But there's a big problem with the scenario "The boneguard's liar" from the first campaign, ACT 3: I can't control my units, and instead I can control the nature!! (I mean: I can control the treasure guardians, make a tree commit suicide etc...)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aha, indeed such bugs will be a bit common, only due to my uncontrolled negligence.
      Its a small bug so I will upload a fix right away.

      Delete
  3. in copper mine must be 3000 gold, copper is more expensive silver

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  4. in fire shadow campaign dont work age up then game stop working. Sorry for my bad english

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I know, I'm working on it but I need help from the community.

      Delete
  5. Hi, I see few problems, in Pampa's map we don't have any hero/war chief.
    And in Amazonia map, The AI stay at his place, they don't go in our island to attack us, so they can be very long...

    sorry for my bad english.

    ReplyDelete
  6. When playing the 1st scenario of the vanilla campaign (the siege of Malta), the turkish Sipahi dies immediatly when they land from the ship.
    When clicking "play" after winning the first scenario, the 2nd one "failed to load".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What the heck? Why do people get "failed to load", they work for me. I will look into it as soon as I can.

      Delete
    2. The Fire and Shadow campaign begins with "The Falcon Lands on Malta" and vice versa. On the first scenario of Fire and Shadow the opening scene is cut out and the camera is rotated in another direction. The warchief's name is "Black Family Estate."

      Delete
  7. Hey friend, how many days left for the new version will be ready for download?;. hope this soon to download.

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  8. AI in map "Great Lakes" become almost immobilized after building big cities and create huge armies. Britsh and Gall's Indians ave big and powerful armies but they don't use it against me. Also when I attack, some of their units get slaughtered without defend.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I will look into it once again. Thank you.

      Delete
    2. If I remember well, this happened to me principally when British AI is in game. The others do their work very well most of the time. I'll continue to report. :)

      Delete
    3. Well, let me explain then.
      What people don't seem to understand is that the AI has different personalities and strategies. Napoleon for example, favors cavalry and native units, and has a balanced attack strategy, which means he attacks but he also builds protection for his base.

      Elizabeth, British, she is a boomer, which means she first builds a powerful economy and then attack.
      Isabella, Spanish, she is a rusher. She doesn't care about base protection and spends all her resources on units with which she attacks you as often as she can.

      But even with these built in strategies they do change the way they play sometimes. In one game for example, Isabella could chose a turtling strategy, which means she will build base defenses and attack less.

      People just want the AI to attack continuously at all times, and while I am not completely against it, its simply very hard to tweak the AoE3 AI since it works in a weird, "lazy" way and requires a lot of codding to make it do even simple, basic things.

      I did however, released a prototype AI. What is different in it? Simple, I removed all strategies and made everyone a rusher, even if some of them need an economy to evolve, like the Dutch because their Settlers cost coin, even so I removed every bit of personality and strategy from the AI and made what everyone seems to want.

      And if this still doesn't satisfy my warmongering fans, then I will increase their rushing status even more and see what happens.

      Thank you and please vote in the survey.

      Delete
  9. Hi, With all european factions if you want to create a second Fort its impossible, cannot build (the card for create a fort at age 4), i dont remember the name...

    ReplyDelete

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